Personality, strategies and game moves linked to prosocial behaviors: A statistical discourse analysis

As no study has systematically theorized and empirically tested an ecological model of students' cooperative behaviors during game-based learning, this study moves toward doing so by modeling multiple levels of antecedents of students' prosocial behaviors during game play. Specifically, we propose a theoretical model of how player personality, players’ personality composition, and recent sequences of strategies or game moves affect the likelihood of prosocial behavior in each turn of talk. Then, we empirically tested our model on 8432 turns of talk by 17 adolescents in eight face to face games via statistical discourse analysis.

Players who were agreeable, conscientious, and patient showed prosocial behaviors more often. Meanwhile groups with only one agreeable person, only one extrovert, or only one conformist showed fewer prosocial behaviors. Furthermore, recent strategies such as advise, lend resources, or consent were more likely to precede a prosocial behavior. By contrast, recent aggressive moves reduced the likelihood of an immediate prosocial behavior. For example, a sequence of consecutive attacks sharply reduced the likelihood of a prosocial behavior. Furthermore, interactions among these attributes also affected the likelihood of prosocial behaviors.

These results contribute to and help integrate social identity theory and social learning theory by moving toward an ecological explanatory model with player personalities, player composition, sequences of strategies and game moves, and their interactions. These insights (a) help bridge the gap in our understanding of how students act and react in strategic activities, and (b) inform game design and instructional practices seeking to foster prosocial behaviors and environments.